Ants in my pants

Miles: 9.6
Start time: 7:32am
End time: 4:35pm
High / Avg / Low temp: 75.3F / 67.3F / 59.3F
Relative Humidity Avg: 38.3%
Injuries: some hip pain (Matt)

We slept with the fly off of our tent last night, and the view of the stars was amazing, one of the many highlights of walking remote places is the reduction of light pollution, so many more stars can be seen along with the usual stars and constellations you are used to appear so much bigger and brighter in the sky..

We commenced this morning at a reasonable time, and immediately started an ascent of a thousand feet, and within 4 miles we had descended that thousand and some to today's water source. It was a shallow trickle across the trail, but it was cool, and very welcome.  We relaxed and filtered 3 gallons of water, and set back out into wilds by 1pm.  My hip decided it wanted to hurt today, making every step slow and somewhat painful, i ate 4 Advil today and that seemed to take the edge off it for most of the afternoon, no way to live, drugged to the eyeballs, but the things we do to live, we have to make it to the next water source, no choice but to press on.  Sure you'd say, why didn't you just hang back at that water source you were at, no real reason except for we carry a finite amount of food, the clock is a ticking as they say

We are at mile 674 at the moment, the next water is around mile 680, then possibly 693, then 697, then we escape at mile 700.  You can see the urgency with water, mixed with food, drives our base schedule and motivation to complete a minimum of miles per day. We have to make it a mile number closer to 690 tomorrow so we have a chance of escaping the next day, or at least be within range of escaping early the next day, which would be ideal seeing as a bar and grill are at that escape point, with unlimited pancakes for breakfast..

You see where this is going..

Omnomnomnom

But while we sat to cook dinner tonight, a respectable distance from our selected camp site, I was tired and sloppy, and didn't check to closely to what I was sitting on.  A freight train worth of ants were running on the rocks I choose to sit on, I didn't sit directly on them, but my kilt dangled tantalizingly close and they decided to investigate this new area..en masse .. My knickers were swarming with them, little did I know, I just noticed them on my pack..then as my eyes traced their path from the pack to where I was sitting my heart sank then immediately panicked.. My awesome wife saved the day though and brushed them all away, she's a keeper

We ambled on after our meal, I had mac n cheese, Jocelyn had a Mexican and chicken rice dish, we ambled up this thousand foot climb, slowly, as the sun was blazing down on us even though it was 3pm, we made it mostly to the top of the climb and found a tiny one tent camp site, just enough for our tent and no interlopers, which is one of our preferred camp site selection criteria

We are currently flopped on our sleep pads, awaiting darkness and sleep to take us, life is good